The subject matter disclosed herein relates to power plant operation and in particular to responding to alarms that are triggered during operation of the power plant.
Power plants generally include a number of machines that are operated to produce power or electricity. These machines may include a number of sensors that monitor components of the machines or operating parameters in order to ensure their proper operation. When a particular operating parameter falls outside of a preselected range, a set of logic will send an alarm to a control unit in order to alert an operator working at the control unit. Often, the plant developers do not have the benefit of observing mature operation of the power plant whereas the plant operator does, and no efficient mechanism exists to allow the operator's experience to improve future designs. Also, some of the alarms may be more critical to operation of the power plant than others. However, currently an alarm may be presented to the operator with the same level of urgency as any other alarm or may be assigned an alarm priority when alarm is designed. There is no way for the operator to categorize an alarm that increases the effectiveness of the operator in operating the power plant or to collect quantitative data related to the alarm for use in plant operation or plant development.